Sooty Tern Update – encouraging progress!

Apologies for the delay in posting but paperwork deadlines have kept me very heavily occupied over the last 10 days – here’s hoping the effort pays off!

I paid a 24-hour visit to the island, weekend before last, in order to show some representatives of a potential donor agency the ongoing environmental work on Denis and also highlight some aspects that may be of interest to their organisation.

I made a special effort however to follow up on the sooty tern project during the visit and see how work is progressing and have some very encouraging news to recount.

I observed several birds circling very low over the project area and calling and also observed 3 birds landing. As we have seen before single birds that land, bow and display to the models but of course the models do not respond. However when they land in groups they can display to each other and this is our hope that sufficient birds can be attracted simultaneously down to the site such that they can cross-stimulate each other and begin the formation of a breeding colony.

That day though, I was particularly interested in the behaviour of one bird that appeared to be exhibiting “scrape-making” behaviour. This is the precursor to egg laying and of course a very exciting development for the project. The bird stayed on the ground for more than 40 minutes and was twice attended by another bird – perhaps its mate? See photos in side bar which, although somewhat overexposed (it was a very bright sunny day) and taken at the maximum zoom nevertheless, serve to show the birds on the ground in amongst the models. The bird was down on its chest and displayed the rocking side-to-side motion that accompanies the activity of making a scrape in the ground that it will later lay in. I was not though, due to the lie of the land, able to see whether the bird’s feet were in fact scraping at the ground in order to make a depression. Notably having a left a bird (presumably the same one) did later return to the exact same location. So fingers crossed!

That however is just the least of it! On the morning of Wednesday the 24th June I received a call from the volunteers advising me that 20 birds had been on the ground that morning and that they had observed 3 pairs mating. This is very encouraging and caused me to advise several interested parties including Prof. Feare in UK accordingly.

We are of course still learning as we go; such a project has never been attempted with Sooty terns before and we are continuing to refine the methodology as we progress. These developments however constitute a major advance and give us hope for the future even if this year we do not have birds attempting breed on the site.

Time will tell… check back regularly for updates.